YAHR (9/5/14): While news about hundreds of nude celebrity photos stolen from Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and others have thrown the Internet into a frenzy, one artist has decided to take advantage of the madness.

Los Angeles artist XVALA will showcase some uncensored images of the stars, among others, as part of his new exhibition, titled “No Delete,” next month at Cory Allen Contemporary Art’s The Showroom in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“We share our secrets with technology,” XVALA said in a statement describing the project. “And when we do, our privacy becomes accessible to others.”

Interesting concept! If we understand what XVALA is saying, when you put a photograph on-line, other people can sometimes see it. It “becomes accessible to others!”

We’ll assume that some person in L. A. has made the statements in question. We’ll assume he’s been “building a collection” of “personal, illicit celebrity images on the Internet,” just as Yahr reports.

That said, do you believe that the person in question is sensibly described as an “artist,” that his collection is sensibly described as an “exhibit?” Or is it possible that this whole thing is a bit of a con—that it’s built upon an XVALAian gamble that no one is currently able, or willing, to discern and name an act of fraud?

Are we humans able to make sensible judgments at all? Once the gatekeepers have gone away—once we’re left on our own, with no one to filter what we can think—do we have any ability to make sensible critical judgments? Or are we forced to find new authorities and then to recite their scripts?

We’ve been asking these questions as we read Fawn Brodie’s fairly famous 1981 psychobiography, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character.

The book is still alive in our politics, in ways we’ve described this week. But the book is full of very strange chains of reasoning and evidence, and it isn’t clear that people have ever been able to tell.

Let’s not overstate! Right from the start, people have sometimes noted the weirdness of Brodie’s book. But we’ve been struck by the fact that the New York Times couldn’t seem to see its essential weirdness in real time; by the fact that Rick Perlstein made it a major source for part of Nixonland, his 2008 best-seller; and by the way some elements of Brodie’s book seem to have transmigrated into the egregious press coverage of Campaign 2000.

Without gatekeepers to tell us what to think, can we humans reason at all? Let’s consider the New York Times real-time review of Brodie’s book, in which senior reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt actually praised some of the weirder parts of the text.

Credit where due! Yesterday, we noted that Lehmann-Haupt started his review by criticizing Brodie’s weird rumination on this question: “Did Frank Nixon kick his sons?”

What was weird about Brodie’s treatment? There was no evidence that Frank Nixon ever kicked his sons. In oral histories, no one had ever described such a thing, and Nixon had never said so either.

But so what? By the time Brodie was done, she was offering this twin-barreled conclusion:

“Whether Frank Nixon kicked his son or not is not as certain as that Nixon felt himself to be kicked around by his father.”

It was certain that Nixon felt himself to be kicked around by his father. Brodie warned that we couldn’t be as certain that Frank Nixon kicked his sons!

As scholarship, that was an act of insanity. In the Times, Lehmann-Haupt noted the oddness, saying the book contained “at least a few of those psychoanalytic passages that make a reader flinch with their simplistic presumptuousness.”

Lehmann-Haupt could see that something was strange about that part of the book. But on balance, he praised Brodie’s book, perhaps deferring to her authority as a well-known biographer.

LEHMANN-HAUPT (9/5/81): The big drawback to Professor Brodie's painstaking, overarching approach is that it involves so much recapitulation of the sordid and, for the time being, too familiar, Nixon story. The only incidental compensation of hearing it all again is that by reviewing all the vast research that has been done on Mr. Nixon's career, the author is able to introduce certain details we may not have heard before, such as Leonard Garment's speculation to Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein that the real reason Mr. Nixon failed to destroy his office tapes was because he ''wanted the world to see him go to the bathroom,'' which Professor Brodie takes to mean he wanted to reveal ''his ineffable dirtiness.''

But the advantages to her leisurely rehashing approach far outweigh the disadvantages. By compiling so much evidence for her insights, Professor Brodie not only avoids (mostly) the glib insights that psychohistorians are so inclined to toss off, she also succeeds in creating a weighty portrait of Mr. Nixon as a remarkable man undone by forces that shaped his parents and his childhood...

Leonard Garment’s “speculation” does appear in Brodie’s final chapter. In notes, she says Woodward told her, in an interview, that Garment made the quoted remark to himself and Bernstein.

Richard Nixon “wanted the world to see him go to the bathroom?” This is one of the odder, wilder “speculations” about why the tapes weren’t destroyed. From Brodie’s text, there’s no way to know if Garment was speaking metaphorically, or if he might have been joking or speaking in exasperation, or just what he might have meant by this comment, which Woodward and Bernstein never quoted in their own books.

In Brodie’s book, she largely misstates what Woodward and Bernstein said about Garment’s view of the tapes in the relevant part of The Final Days. It’s odd to think that a major reviewer would regard this peculiar remark by Garment as one of the major “compensations” a reader receives for wading through the length of Brodie’s book.

Richard Nixon “wanted the world to see him go to the bathroom?” It’s odd to think that a major reviewer would single that out as a high point in a book he is praising on balance. That said, the strangest part of the Times review involved a very strange part of Brodie’s book—her treatment of “the theme of fratricide in Nixon’s life.”

As we’ll see tomorrow, Brodie’s treatment of that theme is almost completely incoherent. It’s never clear what Brodie thinks the word “fratricide” even means.

Brodie’s treatment of “the theme of fratricide” is one of the strangest parts of a very strange book. It’s even stranger than her claim that Nixon wrote a letter, when he was ten, complaining about being kicked.

In Brodie’s hands, “the theme of fratricide in Nixon’s life” is an utterly incoherent, utterly strange, very large mega-muddle. But look at the New York Times review! Lehmann-Haupt devotes a substantial chunk of his piece to the rewards of Brodie’s treatment of this theme, calling it “a particularly striking example of what makes Professor Brodie different and more challenging as a psychohistorian.”

Can we humans reason at all? Tomorrow, we’ll look at the gigantic muddle which led the Times to call down praise on an authority figure’s last book.

In the New York Times review, Brodie was treated like a gatekeeper. A well-known Los Angeles figure had said it. By law, it must be worthwhile.

For extra credit: Is it possible that a “Los Angeles artist” can, like the figures in his exhibit, possibly have no clothes?

But on balance, [Lehmann-Haupt] praised Brodie’s book, perhaps deferring to her authority as a well-known biographer.

One problem with many NY Times non-fiction book reviews is that the reviewer is not an expert in the subject matter. Thus, the reviewer doesn't have the right background to point out all the errors.

An example is William D. Cohan’s “The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities.” The Sunday Times book review wrote, The book is at once a masterwork of reporting and a devastating critique of a university that has lost its way

In fact, this book is dreadfully one-sided and filled with inaccuracies. The reviewer, Caitlin Flanagan, who is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, evidently hadn't followed case closely enough to evaluate it properly.

No, but at my wife's 50th class reunion at Wellesley, I met a spouse who's on the faculty at Duke. He said that he was pressured some to join the infamous Group of 88 statement, but he resisted and didn't sign the statement..

"The book is still alive in our politics, in ways we’ve described this week."

No Bob, it isn't. You haven't described it beyond this sentence in the post to which you link: "One unfortunate part of the book seemed to transmigrate into the press corps’ coverage of Campaign 2000."

Whatever unfortunate transmigration "seemed" to happen in 2000 is never described. And 2000 is not "alive." It is history. Fourteen year old history.

Fawn Brodie's book isn't even "fairly famous" although some might see that description as a downgrade from yesterday's label of it as "an influential book."

Well, there you go. Brodie's book is not only among the most influential in the past 30+ years simply because Bob says so, it is also "well known among historians in Academia."

Goodness, the issue is settled. By all means lets spend the next six months repeating ourselves concerning this monumentally important work that forever change the course of political journalism and brought us the War on Gore.

I promise Dr.Brave if my wife come back i will shear testimony about him..

Hello to every one out here, am here to share the unexpected miracle that happened to me three days ago, My name is Jeffrey Dowling,i live in Texas,USA.and I`m happily married to a lovely and caring wife,with two kids A very big problem occurred in my family seven months ago,between me and my wife so terrible that she took the case to court for a divorce she said that she never wanted to stay with me again,and that she did not love me anymore So she packed out of my house and made me and my children passed through severe pain. I tried all my possible means to get her back,after much begging,but all to no avail and she confirmed it that she has made her decision,and she never wanted to see me again. So on one evening,as i was coming back from work,i met an old friend of mine who asked of my wife So i explained every thing to her,so she told me that the only way i can get my wife back,is to visit a spell caster,because it has really worked for her too So i never believed in spell,but i had no other choice,than to follow her advice. Then she gave me the email address of the spell caster whom she visited.(bravespellcaster@gmail.com}, So the next morning,i sent a mail to the address she gave to me,and the spell caster assured me that i will get my wife back the next day what an amazing statement!! I never believed,so he spoke with me,and told me everything that i need to do. Then the next morning, So surprisingly, my wife who did not call me for the past seven {7}months,gave me a call to inform me that she was coming back So Amazing!! So that was how she came back that same day,with lots of love and joy,and she apologized for her mistake,and for the pain she caused me and my children. Then from that day,our relationship was now stronger than how it were before,by the help of a spell caster . So, was now stronger than how it were before,by the help of a spell caster . So, i will advice you out there to kindly visit the same website http://bravespellcaster.yolasite.com,if you are in any condition like this,or you have any problem related to “bringing your ex back. So thanks to Dr Brave for bringing back my wife,and brought great joy to my family once again.{bravespellcaster@gmail.com} , Thanks.

"XVALA is an art project created by Jeff Hamilton (b. 1970). XVALA typically focuses on pieces that address celebrity and popular culture and he refers to this as ‘Tabloid Art.’ XVALA collaborated with sculptor Daniel Edwards on ‘The Brangelina,’ a house located in Oklahoma. In 2010, Jeff Hamilton walked away from his art and the name XVALA. Hamilton passed the name on to unnamed, upcoming artist."

http://thedailyomnivore.net/2013/02/07/xvala/

The next entry from theDaily Omnivore is on artist Steve Powers who has a connection as a participant in the legendary work of Joey Skaggs.